Not Fallen... Yet

Chapter 5 - He Drops Some Crackers. That's it. That's the Whole Chapter

The next morning when Aryan rolled from his bed, or, you know, pile of furs that he called a bed, he was unfortunately not hit with the sudden realization that all that had occurred the previous evening was simply a dream. The demon groaned at the realization, throwing an arm over his eyes and willing himself to go back to sleep with the hope of waking with better results. However, sleep refused to come now that dawn was upon them - Or, the time the demons decided was dawn as there was no actual sunrise nor sense of aging to keep time in the Netherworld - and Aryan was forced to begrudgingly rise from his petty excuse for a bed and face the facts.

Kiran wasn't a dream. Somewhere, deep below the caverns of known life, an injured angel awaited his return and depended on Aryan alone to keep him alive. Fuck.

The demon groaned miserably at the notion, unappreciative of how real it all seemed in the new day, as if waking up and accepting the truth of the matter had sealed his fate. Aryan pushed the thoughts away for now, however, needing to get on with his morning shift and, much more importantly, retrieve his lockbox from Damion.

The demon went on about his morning like he would any other, pulling his leather jacket from where he'd tossed it haphazardly to the floor the night before and shrugging it on over his bare upper body, shivering slightly at the cold touch of leather to skin. Aryan then moved on to pluck some dark jeans from the corner of the cave where they'd been flung at some earlier date and jammed his legs through them with an irritated snort as his foot tried to go through the gaping holes torn from the battered material at least three separate times before he finally had the things on properly.

After that, the guy combed his thick, black hair back into his customary bun and was out the front door, spreading his wings and taking to the sky as soon as he'd pulled the wooden thing closed behind him. Aryan flew a little higher than he'd intended to today as he made his way through the familiar series of tunnels towards the Gathering Cavern, painfully knocking the tip of his right horn off the low hanging cave ceiling with a sharp crack right before he reached his destination, eliciting a disgruntled curse huffed agitatedly under his breath. Nervous energy buzzed through him relentlessly all morning, causing him to do stupid things like that which he was usually so skilled at avoiding, the knowledge that the angel hid deep in the bowels of the Underworld and could easily be found out leaving the demon uneasy even as he tried to ignore that fact.

Actually, Aryan would honestly just like to ignore that fact for as long as possible - preferably to the end of his natural life - and he pushed it away even as he finally entered the Gathering Cavern to retrieve his lockbox, trying his very best not to picture the situation he'd been in when he discovered that Damion possessed the desired item and determined to think about absolutely anything but about angels hiding under his wing and shrinking into him with fear as the demon in question destroyed that symbolic feather without cause. Literally, anything but that. Aryan would think about sagging grandma tits before he let even the beginnings of those unwanted thoughts enter his mind.

When he entered the familiar space of the large cavern however, Aryan found it absolutely empty save for a few stray demons flitting rapidly about in an attempt to reach work on time. The giant cage in the center of the room, taking up the majority of the space, sat empty, unless you counted the blood stains from where Lilith had laid defeated yesterday which had failed to be cleaned up since then and the few stalls that existed around the edge of the cave were left abandoned with no one to run them.

This wasn't too odd of an occurrence as no one was off shift to gather in said cave but this was the place of Damion's work so to not see him here was honestly an oddity that left Aryan with an inexplicable unsettled feeling in his gut. There was no seeable reason for the demon to feel this way as he stalked up to the the counter Damion usually ran the fights from, it just rubbed him the wrong way.